From 1989 to 1996 – so last century, you might say, and you’d be right! – I worked as a Project Manager and Senior Software Technical Author, having worked my way up from trainee. According to an old CV of mine, the work consisted of writing software user manuals for a variety of packages including Film Booking, Accountancy, Stores Administrators and Air Traffic Control. I produced system software documentation for electronic warfare systems from programs written in Assembler and CORAL 66. I was an in-house programmer creating and maintaining a job costing application written in Foxpro 2.0. I provided pre-delivery quality assurance to BS5750, proof-reading, and produced quotes and synopses for new projects.
What has all this got to do with styles and you? A lot. Because one of the first things I was taught when I started was that a style guide underpinned every deliverable and by having that style sheet created at the beginning, you ended up with a tightly formatted document in line with its specification. This format would then proceed to print stage with negligible need for any further adjustment (apart from typesetting for the page).
I have continued this approach with formatting and if you create styles in Word then you are pretty much guaranteed a decent layout when it is converted to epub or uploaded to KDP. It removes all the odd quirks that appear when soft returns, spaces, tabs, and the like are left in. It also ensures uniformity of appearance. And honestly, it makes formatting so much easier. A styled Word document using section breaks as opposed to page breaks has been my go to for upload.
Note that the rest of this post is for those who don’t know anything about styles. It is only intended as a brief introduction.
If you are not sure about styles, you can find them as quick access in the Task Bar
Or by clicking the little arrow at the bottom of the above, you are shown the full list on the left of the screen
These show a number of styles I currently use across the board. In general, there are usually only three basic styles you would need initially: – heading, first paragraph and following paragraph. Others could be scene break, second heading, title page header etc, but that is up to you to decide. I would suggest going with those first three to play with initially and become comfortable with styles. In addition, if you later decide you need to change something, eg the heading font size, all you need to do is update the heading style and the change is applied globally. Styles remove a lot of manual effort.
Styling a Header
You can format a header in the document and select Update Heading 1 or you can create it in Styles.
Every setting you want to apply to the header can be done here via Modify:
All you need to do then is click on your header and then click on Heading 1 and that style is applied. Whenever you write a header after that, again just apply the style. It saves all the manual work. These headings will also show up in any CTRL+F search so give you the structure of the document too.
Of course you can set up headings with different names rather than Heading 1, Heading 2. Via at the bottom left of the Style list.
Paragraphs
My first paragraphs are non-indented, justified and I set line-spacing to either 1.15 or 1.3 cm and that’s it. Every first paragraph in a chapter is formatted with a click of my created FirstPara style.
My RestofPara, ie all the other paragraphs in the book are the same as the first paragraph but with an indent.
If you’ve written umpteen paragraphs, highlight the whole lot, click the style you’ve made and there you are. All are consistent in appearance.
You can create a word template document and use that in future with all the styles you created present (File, Save As, type – template) or you can copy them into other documents to save setting up from scratch.
Import/Export Styles
Click at the bottom of Styles. The following window opens. Click Import/Export
The window on the left appears. Close the file in the right window. Then click Open File and choose the document you want to send the styles to. Initially, it will appear empty because it’s set to just template files. Change file type to all files and you will be able to find the document you want
Highlight those you want to copy over in the left window, click copy and you will see them appear in the right hand side. No need to recreate styles all over again!
I do urge everyone to use styles. It is not scary or complicated once you get used to it!
After Word What Next for Your Document?
You can either upload the styled Word doc to KDP and preview there, or you can create an epub and upload that.
I still upload Word docs but also generate an epub for customers via Calibre conversion software (free here) so they can use them for Ingrams or whoever.
Notes:
- Before you upload an epub to whichever site you’re going to, I would also recommend doing a validation check. Something I’ve recently begun to do after some issues with footnote numbers in an epub. (Easily solved by converting to epub3 as opposed to epub2 in Calibre). There are a number of free checkers out there. I use Pagina EPUB Checker.
- Fancy fonts in e-books. They just won’t appear because of the restrictions of e-readers. It is something the reader and e-reader control. But I continue to format the styles with the fonts I need even if they don’t appear in the uploaded ebook simply because I import the Word document into Affinity Publisher and that imports all the styles. Then I only have to focus on setting up master pages for headers and footers and pagination/typesetting. That original styled Word doc saves a heap of work at this stage too!
Leave a Reply